1 But Wait, I Need an Idea

Getting Ideas

Many of you will have an idea of a movie you want to write already, but some of you may wonder where writers get their ideas.

Ideas are all around us.

Ideas can come from almost anywhere. The key is to be open to them. Being open to ideas means that you are an observer. You pay attention to the world around you. That can be people sitting near you in a restaurant. That can be family members. That can be a story on the news. Observe the world and when you see or hear something interesting to you, write it down. Come back to it later, burrow into it to see why what you wrote down grabbed your attention.

If you are a fan of certain genres, then research pertinent to that genre is a great resource for ideas. For example, if you love science fiction, read up on the latest advances in technology. That can inspire you. Perhaps you love Westerns. OK, study some history, read up on that time period and maybe ideas will come to you through historical research.

What you are looking for is something that interests you enough that you think it could make a good story. Before you can grab someone else’s interest, you need to make sure you are interested in it.

Writing a movie takes time – often a lot of time. You will be spending hours and hours, days and days, with this story, so you need something that absorbs you completely, something that you care about.

That leads me to this: You have something you want to say, something about the world or the human condition or relationships or…whatever. Because you are a writer, that means you have something to say. Trust me on this, all writers, and that means YOU TOO, have something they want to say. Ultimately, what you choose to write about, your idea, comes from what you want to say. This is so important because it is why you want to write this movie.

Look around you, do some research, find an idea that you like. Find out how that idea ties to what you want to say. Once we have a general idea, we can work on a premise.